Is the concept of inconceivability not a license of illogicality?

In the Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy, much that is not explainable logically is explained away by invoking the concept of achintya (inconceivable)? Doesn’t this make it just an escapeway from logicality?

Transcript

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Question.
Is the concept of achintya not a cover-up for hiding all sorts of illogicality in the philosophy of Gaudiya Vaishnavism? Answer. No, not at all. Achintya as a concept is not meant to be a license for illogicality but it is a means for helping us comprehend the validity and veracity the truthfulness of scripture even when that truthfulness is not immediately evident to us.
So let us understand when and where this word can be used. In the 9.4 and 9.5, Lord Krishna makes apparently contradictory statements. 9.4 he says he says by me in my unmanifested form the whole universe is pervaded.
All beings are in me but I am not in them. But then the next verse he says all living beings are not situated in me. The previous verse he said all living beings are situated in me.
Now he is saying all living beings are not situated in me. And this is my mystic opulence. So now how do we understand the statements of Krishna like this which seem to be almost contradictory and the Vedic scriptures often contain statements like this.
For example, the Vedic scriptures may say that God has a form. Other places they may say God does not have a form. So God has qualities.
He is saguna or he is nirguna. He has no qualities. Now different schools of thought have tried to make sense of these teachings, these scriptures statements in various ways.
So the school of Mayavad tries to categorize all scriptural statements in two categories. He says one is Mahavakya and other is Laghuvakya. Mahavakya is the great truths and Laghuvakya is minor truths which is a euphemism for saying that it is not ultimately true which is untrue.
So the Mayavadi select some few handful of statements from the scriptures like Tattvamasi, Pragyanam Brahma, Ayamatma Brahma, Sarvam Kalmumidam Brahma and call these as Mahavakya. So these statements mean that I am Brahman, everything here is Brahman, the consciousness is Brahman, this Atma is Brahman and basically they take the statements in the Upanishads which talk about the oneness of God and absolutize them by saying that these are the ultimate truths. And all the other statements in the Vedic scriptures which talk about the duality that we are the servants and the Lord is the served.
We are the worshippers, the Lord is the worshipped. All the statements which talk about duality, they relegate these statements to a lower category and in this way basically they reconcile the scriptural statements by declaring certain scriptural statements to be basically false. So Shilajiv Goswami, one of the great Gaudiya Vaishnava Acharyas based on the of Srila Caitanya Mahaprabhu which reflect the esoteric essence of the Vedic literature states that this sort of selective elevation of certain statements of scripture to the level of absolute truth violates the sanctity and the integrity of scripture and results in majority of the scripture being categorized to the level of Laghuvakya because majority of the scripture contains statements talking about worship.
If we look at the Mahabharata, if we look at the Ramayana, if we look at the Puranas, there are so many stories which elaborately talk about how devotees worship the Lord. So, Shilajiv Goswami says that this sort of strategy is entirely untenable and in this he is also following what Rama Acharya says in his critique of Mayavada. So Shilajiv Goswami says that when we have to understand scripture, certainly there may be hierarchy, there may be classification of the level of revelation in the scripture but essentially we should find a way by which we can maintain the sanctity, the integrity and the truthfulness of the scriptural statements because they are the self-revelation of God.
So then, when the scriptures say that God has a form and God does not have a form, Gajendra says in his prayers to the Lord in the eighth canto, how do we understand it? We accept that both these statements are true. God does not have a form and God has a form. How can we understand that both these statements are true? That we cannot understand.
Because it is a limitation of our logic to not be able to penetrate into the profound import of the scripture and once we exhibit this intellectual humility to understand the fallibility and the limitation of our logical faculty, then we can accept the scriptural truth, yes, God can have no form and God can have a form and then we can move forward, apply the teachings that are taught in the scripture, gain spiritual realization and then we will realize how it is that God has a form and God does not have a form. It is because God is simultaneously having a form but that form is not material so he is said to have no form. Now often we simplistically like a parrot repeat the statement God does not have a material form, he has a spiritual form but actually it takes a profound level of spiritual realization to understand what it means when we say that God does not have a material form but he does have a spiritual form.
We can’t really conceive of a spiritual form and very often we just continue with our conception of a material form and just somehow think that instead of material components comprising it, spiritual components are comprising it but it is not like that. It requires a profound level of realization to understand how there can be something called as a spiritual form. Let’s consider a mundane example to understand this.
If we imagine a tribe of people who have never seen anything green and have no conception of what is green, then somebody who has to explain what is green will tell them that actually the leaf of a tree is yellow and blue and is neither. So we know that yellow and blue colors when they combine together they produce green. So he is trying to describe a green color using some other tools but yellow is something very different, green is blue is something very different and now the combining of yellow and blue to produce green is not something which is theoretically explainable that you imagine yellow, you imagine blue and you try to blend the two and suddenly we get an idea of a green.
It will never work like that. Actually one has to see it happen, one has to experience it, then when one sees green then one will understand what actually it is. So like that Krishna’s transcendental personality is something which has to be perceived through our spiritual advancement.
Till that time for us to gain some understanding the scriptures say that absolute truth has a form like saying it is yellow, it doesn’t have any form that like saying it is blue but then scriptures say that actually both these are incomplete describers because Vishwanath Chakravorty Thakur one of the great Acharyas explained that all scriptural descriptions about God are not descriptions but indications because words can describe him only in an indicative sense, not in an exhaustive sense. So that is why we have to be very careful when we reject certain scriptural sections also because we may be rejecting something which is true at a higher level of realization that we have no access to. So with our limited level of realization and with our excessive faith in our logical faculty we may reject something as illogical to save us from this unfortunate eventuality because once we reject scripture as illogical then we reject the process by following which we could have understood and realized and experienced and realized as true the very truth that we had earlier rejected as illogical.
So to prevent that eventuality in the scriptures often talk in paradoxical and seemingly contradictory terms and to save us from committing unintentional offense to scripture and unintentionally ruining our own prospects for spiritual advancement the Gaudiya Vaishnava Acharyas like Jiva Swami used the term called Achintya. Now it is not that anybody and everybody can make any illogical statement and when asked to defend that illogical statement everybody says this is Achintya. No, the concept of Achintyatva in conceivability applies primarily to scriptural statements.
If some of our statements are illogical they are illogical and we cannot take the concept of Achintyatva to just deny our illogicality but the concept of Achintya has to be understood to be different from the similar seeming concept used by Mayavadis called as Anirvachanya. Anirvachanya is indescribable. So the Mayavadis use the scripture selectively whenever it agrees with their philosophy that ultimately everything is Brahman and therefore we don’t have to worship God in the ultimate sense.
We are not atheistic, we are not theistic, we are trans-theistic that’s what their claim is. We go beyond theism to merging with God. This is unfortunately misleading because that is not the import of the scriptures.
However, after having imposed their philosophy on the scripture and selectively highlighted only those sections of scripture which talk about oneness, now the Mayavadis are faced with the problem of illogicality because there are two questions which Mayavad has throughout its Chakrad history found to be impossible to tackle. They are, first question, if everything that exists is Brahman, where does illusion come from? So if Brahman is the only reality then where does the whole illusion come from? If Brahman is the only reality then is illusion a separate reality from Brahman or is it if it is a part of Brahman then Brahman becomes contaminated by illusion. If it is separate from Brahman then that means Brahman is not the only reality.
There is some other reality also and the second question is how can Brahman come under illusion? If Brahman is supreme then how can illusion which obviously is not superior to Brahman bring Brahman in its control? So again this question also they try to evasively answer by saying that actually we are not under illusion. We are only thinking that we are under illusion. When we get realized then we will see that we are no longer in illusion.
But then the question is to think that we are in illusion is also a form of illusion and where does that illusion, that illusory thinking about illusion, where does that come from? So to escape from these serious logical problems that their philosophy faces they invent a category called Anirvachaniya. So does illusion, does maya exist or not? So they say actually it is Anirvachaniya. It’s not expressible by words and they say maya is a simultaneous existent, non-existent, indescribable state of existence.
Now this sounds to be like a very good jugglery of words but it doesn’t stand, sustains scrutiny. So they say that as long as we are in illusion we can’t really understand that what illusion is. Once we come out of illusion we will understand it.
So here illusion is a category of epistemological uncertainty. That means they say that here Anirvachaniya refers to something being indescribable because of our inability to understand it. But within just a few magical waves of hand this idea of Anirvachaniya moves from being a category of epistemological uncertainty to a category of ontological reality.
That means they say that Anirvachaniya is a category of existence and once they have invented a category of existence that is simultaneously existent and non-existent and how it’s something can be simultaneously existent and non-existent is indescribable by words. Then everything that is in existence is put into that category. Now our sense of I-ness, the whole world, our whole struggle against illusion, all our sufferings, they are all put into this category of Anirvachaniya.
And this is actually intellectual escapism. So in Anirvachaniya there are two intellectual transgressions. The first intellectual transgression is rather than considering scripture to be true, one the Mayavadis impose their idea on scripture and after imposing their idea on scripture then they reject most of scripture by subordinating it to their selective Mahavakyas.
So in this way by a selective exploitation of scripture they establish their philosophy based on scripture and then when they are unable to defend their philosophy on logical grounds, then they invent a category called Anirvachaniya and by putting practically all of experienced reality into that category they try to escape the logical fallacies faced by the scripture. So actually the Mayavad is neither sustainable from scriptural point of view nor sustainable from logical point of view. And against these two serious problems they create two defenses.
The first defense is to very conveniently divide scripture into two categories. And second defense is to invent a category of existence called, to imagine or invent a category called Anirvachaniya and put everything into it. The Gaudiya Vaishnavacharyas do not resort to such intellectual fleet of hands, such intellectual cunningness.
First of all they say that Achintya Vedavid philosophy is a natural inference from the scriptural statements. Why? Because the scripture themselves contain statement that to the extent of oneness as well as to the extent of duality. The extent that there is some amount of oneness between the Atma and God there is also difference between Atma and God.
So the Bhed and the Abhed both kind of statements are there in scripture and Achintya Vedavid is just an expression for what is actually found in the scripture. There is Bhed and Abhed and how the Bhed and Abhed can simultaneously be there because that is not understandable. So we say it is Achintya.
So in this way Achintya Vedavid is a natural outgrowth or a natural inference from the unbiased study of the scripture and then the Achintya is used not to defy or deny logic but to recognize that logic has its limits and scripture talks about truths that are beyond the realm of logic and therefore while giving logic its reign in appropriate field where logic does not have its reach and the matters of experience from a higher more evolved spiritual perspective the scripture and Achintya Vedavid says this matter is Archintya. So if you read Jiva Goswami’s Satsang Darbhas, if you read Vallai Vidyakshi’s Govinda Bhashya, you will find that there is so much logic that they use and there is no question of there being a license for illogicality there but so within its realm logic has its value but recognizing that logic has limitations as far as it can extend for that which is beyond the realm of logic for that which can be understood only by experience, Achintya is the best way to explain those aspects of scriptural teachings which reflect a higher reality. Thank you.